Journalist Spits on Blogs — How Surprising

Posted on December 25, 2002 in Blogging Journalists & Pundits

Someone rattled my email cage and told me to look at the nasty things Elizabeth Osder said about web-loggers.

I looked and found nothing that surprised me: Another journalist buried in laurels from her peers who dismissed what is probably the most vibrant medium out there. Meg Hourihan gave her informed perspective. Allow me to present mine as an addendum:

Let us recall where Ms. Osder is coming from:

• She is part of an institution, namely the journalism profession, which has little reason for professional credentials. When was the last time a journalist saved your life or won your case for you? The fact is that journalism schools teach nothing than you can’t get from working with a capable librarian or a professor in just about any field. (Your fact-finding skills might be better after such an education.) When they join the paper, they have lots of resources, it is true, but that’s not a result of their education. It’s the result of their employers sheer accumulation of money to buy the space and the resources. Journalism schools appear to exist primarilly to give disgruntled former editors and production managers jobs. You should worry if the doctor you are operating on knows where your appendix is: what is more important when reading any newspaper article is can you trust the facts? There are plenty of sites full of clippings written by journalism majors which demonstrate that journalism degrees do little other than confer prestige. (Recall that these people regularly and unquestioningly publish stories about ghosts and other “paranormal phenomena”. Newspaper articles form almost the entire corpus of material that those who study urban legends consult.)
• Unlike the law and medicine, this is a field that is largely free of malpractice suits. If a journalist reports that Iraqi soldiers dumped 100 incubators full of babies and a war results because they didn’t check their facts, they don’t get sued for the subsequent deaths and starvation in the Middle East. The half smart ones know how to avoid libel, which isn’t all that hard. Journalism is filled with half smart people who think they are brilliant.
• Blogs are self-centered for the most part. There are legions of self-appointed pundits out there. They get their information pretty much the same way that the news pundits get theirs: by reading the wires, picking up reference books, consulting libraries, etc. Some make them up — like news pundits and certain recent presidents have done. The media gives a lot of space to covering self-centered people and not remarking about it at all: consider George Bush’s behavior in the White House for one significant example of media silence. They pick on our self-centeredness because we don’t pay them and we seem to be easy targets.
• The Constitution ensures that no one holds a monopoly either on speech or the press. Journalists hate to remember that freedom of speech means that anyone using any medium can use it to criticize what another member of this society says. That’s a price we all pay.
• Also on self-centerness, simply witness the cults of various media pundits who apparently can publish anything they want without serious censure by their colleagues, e.g. Anne Coulter. The media has an obligation to cover the media. They’re not doing the job, as the most significant free alternative out there, we bloggers must do something. It’s also our right. Ms. Osder can belittle us, but she can do nothing to silence us without our acquiescence.
• Journalism is full of its own bad reporting practices. It is their unquestioned recitation of facts that we bloggers challenge. These days the media repeats the erroneous information that Bush”won” the 2000 election. The true story is that, through maneuvering and a questionable decision by the Republican dominated U.S. Supreme Court, though he lost the popular vote, he was able to obtain a majority in the electoral college. An honest media must represent him as a man who lost the popular count by half a million votes. But they don’t. I won’t attempt to explain this, but I will call it sloppy journalism. Blogs act as a check and a balance.
• Jealousy and shame. We appear to have scooped them on the Trent Lott story. What was revealed was nothing that shouldn’t have been revealed when he was booed at the Wellstone funeral. With all their resources and expertise, no one in the press attempted to explain just why the crowd heckled Trent Lott. If the Wellstone story had been properly covered in the first place, they would have saved themselves a lot of embarassment when Lott shot off his mouth at Thurmond’s shindig. The Wellstone booing was a story of two antagonists: the so-called sophisticated press did a poor job of explaining the roots of that antagonism. It was much deeper than “blind hate for a Republican”. I doubt that they would have booed Chaffee, for example.
• We do this out of love. If people start to look to us instead of the paid pundits, journalists fear, they will be out of jobs. Furthermore, nothing shakes the world like a movement that money can’t buy. Their bosses have reason to be scared, too.

My advice (my proto-“weblog” came out in 1992):

• Check all facts.
• Be honest about what you know for certain and what you don’t know.
• Write what is true about the stories you share and about your involvement in them.
• Be willing to admit your limits.
• Be personal in your writing and your politics. Don’t just copy from other people. Speak your mind. You’re going to be wrong now and then. Don’t be afraid to admit it.

Plenty of bloggers out there could stand to live by these principles. And, applying Sturgeon’s Law, so could the overwhelming majority of paid pundits.